For non-scientists, scientific studies can be validating, frustrating, and, ultimately, confusing. If you’re like me and don’t really grasp the scientific evidence behind the headlines purporting this or that, the headlines have a particular allure, even if the actual results are not as clear cut as the headlines suggest. And, given that most people simply scan headlines rather than read the articles (not to mention the journals in which these studies are published and all the caveats that might exist), the simple truth is that the headlines are often misleading, though they often become conventional wisdom about how we should live our lives: that we should take fish oil supplements, drink wine, grab a Starbuck’s.

Being someone who wants to live a long and healthy life (who doesn’t?), I try to wade through most of the findings about the health benefits–or risks–of this, that, and the other. An admitted chocoholic, for example, I was excited to read yet another study earlier this year that celebrated the health benefits of chocolate–adding a reduction in stroke risk to a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease. Then, there are always the studies that come out about how drinking a glass of wine can help your heart, prevent cancer, and promote world peace. Ok, well maybe not the latter.

More recently, James Maxwell, a rheumatologist who led a study at the University of Sheffield in England, found that drinking alcohol was beneficial for sufferers of arthritis. He noted that “patients who had drunk alcohol most frequently had symptoms that were less severe than those who had never drunk alcohol or only drank it infrequently.” Of course, it could be that the patient is in too much of a stupor to actually feel the pain. But, I digress.

And, never mind that University of North Carolina professor of medicine Nortin M. Hadler dismissed it as “very weak science,” adding that “before anyone leaps to the bottle, realize that in many resource-advantaged countries this ‘moderate’ level of imbibition is associated with higher socioeconomic status, which itself bodes well for mortality and for rheumatoid arthritis prognosis.” Well, since Hadler’s at my alma mater and I, on the surface, will put great stock in anything a Tar Heel has to say, do I believe what I want to believe (Sheffield) or this notion that the results aren’t quite what the headlines say they are. (It is important to underscore that in all of these studies, researchers make clear that this doesn’t give people carte blanche to binge on either chocolate or alcohol–moderation is always the key.)

Moving on, there’s even more about alcohol in the news.

Perhaps the most “interesting” alcohol-related recent finding (well, it’s not really a study in the scientific sense) I came across was the relationship between drinking and intelligence (hat tip to our friends at the Monkey Cage). I don’t vouch for the claims made, but Razib Khan over on the Discover Blog has plotted various variables and found that:

the more intelligent, who scored high on a vocabulary test, would drink more than the dumb, who scored low….

You can try to control for variables. Race doesn’t matter much for what it’s worth, the trends stay pretty much the same if you constrain to whites. I decided to check the “Bible” variable, which measures literal interpretation. As expected controlling for fundamentalism eliminates much of the Protestant vs. non-Protestant difference, as well as exacerbates the sex difference (fundamentalist women are much more teetotaling than men), but it really didn’t effect the rank relation on many categories.

the protective effect of strong social relationships exceeds the influence of other early-death risk factors, such as:

not exercising

obesity

Low social interaction, on the other hand, is equivalent to:

smoking 15 cigarettes a day

being an alcoholic

I guess if you’re trying to form a summary of these recent reports about how to live a healthy and happy long life: develop great friends and eat chocolate and drink alcohol in moderation. Advice many of us will willingly take–even if it is “weak science.”